Books at the Burgess: Christopher Isherwood Inside Out
Announcing a special event at the Burgess Foundation, featuring Katherine Bucknell talking about her new biography of the iconic writer Christopher Isherwood.
We are delighted to be hosting the Manchester launch of Christopher Isherwood Inside Out, described by David Hockney as ‘A first-rate biography of the man, the writer and the lover.’ Katherine Bucknell will talk about her illuminating new biography of Christopher Isherwood, one of the most prominent writers of the twentieth century, whose writings about Berlin in the 1930s inspired the musical Cabaret, and made him famous.
Using a wealth of unpublished material, Christopher Isherwood Inside Out reveals the drama and complexity of Isherwood’s interior world. It tells how the traumas of his father’s death in World War I and his failure to protect his German lover from the Nazis were healed by his life as a monk in the 1940s, enabling him to commit to an open relationship in the 1950s, and to come out as a ‘grand old man’ of the gay rights movement in the 1970s.
With this new biography, enriched by unlimited access to Isherwood’s partner Don Bachardy, Katherine Bucknell shows how Isherwood achieved a uniquely inspiring personal life. He effected lasting change in our culture through his literary works and the way he lived. Her insightful book reveals the private life behind the public man. Researched over a period of more than 30 years, this is the inside story of the man and his work.
Katherine Bucknell is the leading authority on the life and work of Christopher Isherwood. She has previously edited three volumes of Isherwood’s diaries, covering the years 1939-83; a memoir, The Lost Years; and a collection of letters between Isherwood and Bachardy, The Animals. She has also edited four volumes of W.H. Auden’s writing and written four novels.
About Christopher Isherwood
This event is a homecoming for Isherwood, who was born in High Lane, Stockport, and grew up at the nearby family estate, Marple Hall. He was descended from the Bradshaw family who had owned the hall for generations, their most notorious member being Judge John Bradshaw, the first person to sign the death warrant of Charles I. The landscape of the north of England coloured some of his first experiences of literature, seeing himself as living in the world of the Brontës as he explored the foothills of the Peak District around his home. But, like Anthony Burgess, he outgrew this provincial existence and sought adventure in the wider world.
Isherwood captured his experiences of growing up in England in his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932), the latter of which was published by Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press.
During his various visits to Berlin between 1929 and 1933, Isherwood witnessed the disintegration of the liberal Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi Party. He fictionalised his experiences in his novels Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). He eventually fled Berlin with his German lover, Heinz, who he was trying to protect from conscription into the Nazi war machine. They travelled Europe together until Heinz returned to Germany. Isherwood eventually settled in America, first in New York, and then California, where he lived for the rest of his life.
In California, Isherwood became an early champion of gay rights. His novel A Single Man (1964) is among the first to openly represent same sex relationships during this period of social change, and is considered a foundational work of gay literature. A later memoir, Christopher and His Kind (1976), revisits many of his early experiences, including his Berlin years, through the lens of his identity as a gay man. A Single Man was filmed by Tom Ford with Colin Firth in the leading role, and Christopher and His Kind, adapted as a BBC drama starring Matt Smith and Toby Jones.
Anthony Burgess was a lifelong admirer of Isherwood’s work, identifying his ‘undiminished brilliance as a novelist’. Burgess reviewed Isherwood frequently, and was impressed by his ‘economical presentation of character, the sensorium which is always alive, the humour, the highly personal vision of the real world.’ In 1984, Burgess selected A Single Man as one of his Ninety-Nine Novels, writing that ‘it is a fine piece of plain writing which haunts the memory.’
Books at the Burgess: Christopher Isherwood Inside Out – An illustrated talk by biographer Katherine Bucknell
24 October 2024, 6:30pm, International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester
Tickets: £5 advance or £7 on the door
Find out more
Christopher Isherwood Inside Out by Katherine Bucknell (affiliate link)
You can also listen to Katherine Bucknell discuss Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man on the Ninety-Nine Novels Podcast:
Each purchase from an affiliate link supports the charitable work of the Burgess Foundation.